SLIDE 3 Taub Center – Herbert M. Singer Conference Series
Socioeconomic Impact of Education | September 2011
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Other strategies for improving teacher quality have focused on incentives and
- development. Recent studies from the U.S. provide clear evidence that compensation
incentives for teachers do not suffice to elevate teacher performance in raising student test scores. The ineffectiveness of compensation strategies suggests that even if teachers are motivated to perform better, they lack the tools or working conditions to do so. Other policy advocates recommend working with teachers to improve their skills as a way to elevate teacher quality. While there is an emerging consensus on the elements of effective professional development programs – including an emphasis on teacher knowledge and capacity to teach particular content – reliable evidence is in short supply. Evidence about high-quality teacher preparation programs is even more scarce, although teacher content knowledge for teaching is likely to be equally important in that realm. As with teachers, recent evidence suggests that student performance may be a reliable component of principal evaluations, in addition to other sources of evidence. Tools The most important tools that educators have at their disposal are time and
- materials. The Taub Center’s 2009 State of the Nation report indicated that compared
to other countries, Israeli schools devote a substantial amount of time to instruction, but not necessarily in core academic subjects. This is problematic because time devoted to instruction in a subject area is one of the strongest correlates of student achievement. Current evidence suggests that curricular variations across nations and, within the U.S., across states are linked to variations in student performance. Curricula that are more focused, coherent, and rigorous constitute an essential instructional tool that, if implemented effectively, can elevate student achievement. This proposition has been tested in a variety of arenas, but the best evidence comes from comparisons of student learning opportunities within and across schools. Not surprisingly, students tend to learn more when they have richer opportunities for learning. This line of work speaks to the current debate over a core curriculum in Israel, suggesting that a move to a core curriculum would elevate student achievement in the curricular areas that would become more focused, coherent, and rigorous. Systems Systemic changes in education may be examined at the level of the nation, state, local authority, or school. I will focus on elements at the school and local authority level that have been subjected to rigorous research. First among these is class size. My reading of the evidence indicates that lowering class size in kindergarten and first grade contributes positively to student achievement. This effect persists over time but it does not increase regardless of the size of classes in later grades. It is important to note that this evidence comes from changes in the sizes of classes that are already relatively small, e.g. from 23 students to 17 students. Because classes are much larger in Israel, particularly at the lower secondary level, the effect of class size reduction could be much larger in Israel.
